Suncity Group experiencing slow post-coronavirus recovery

The Macau business unit of Asian junket operator Suncity Group is reportedly still slowly recovering from last year’s coronavirus-related disruption with its overall rolling VIP chip volumes currently standing at around 20% of their pre-pandemic levels.

According to a report from GGRAsia, this is the opinion of the Hong Kong-headquartered branch of financial services giant Goldman Sachs Group Incorporated following a December in which aggregated gross gaming revenues for the whole of Macau decreased by 65.8% year-on-year to approximately $978.75 million.

Radical relief:

The financial institution reportedly declared that Suncity Group’s VIP-facing business was ‘lagging behind’ the overall Macau market with its bookings for the upcoming Chinese New Year celebrations being ‘relatively light.’ The bank’s Carrie Jiang, Simon Cheung and Alpha Wang purportedly moreover stated that the junket firm’s post-pandemic recovery ‘has so far been behind expectations’ with the current ‘soft market conditions’ having prompted it to shutter operations in Australia and South Korea as well as more local rooms including those inside The Parisian Macao property from Las Vegas Sands Corporation subordinate Sands China Limited.

Reportedly read the analysis from Jiang, Cheung and Wang…

“Overall, Suncity Group is taking the view that the Asian VIP gaming market will take time and only recover gradually.”

Unique situation:

The Goldman Sachs Group Incorporated analysts reportedly furthermore explained that Suncity Group’s target market of VIP gamblers was significantly hurt by the 15-day shutdown of Macau casinos instituted last February after the former Portuguese enclave recorded its first cases of coronavirus. They proclaimed that the subsequent introduction of travel bans and social distancing protocols had made its ‘quite troublesome to return’ to the city although this state of affairs was slightly eased in August after local authorities began reissuing group travel and Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) visas to residents of mainland China.

Future approach:

Despite all of these difficulties, the analysts reportedly surmised that Suncity Group has ‘no intention’ of changing its strategy of ‘expanding into overseas markets in the next two to three years’ via the construction of its ‘own integrated resorts across Asia outside of Macau’. These projects purportedly include Russia’s ever-growing Tigre De Cristal venue in addition to the $4 billion Hoiana development in central Vietnam, which recently had the official grand opening of its first stage delayed until the second half of the year.